Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK), the largest Tamil party in Sri Lanka and once a pioneer of Tamil nationalism in the first decades after the independence of Ceylon, has strayed far from its historic mission. Founded in 1949 as the Federal Party, ITAK was born out of the necessity to challenge the Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarianism that sought to dismantle the political and cultural…
The pogrom against Tamils in July 1983 was supported by deeply held ideological assumptions that still inform the political logic of the Sinhala people and their leaders.